As craters grow bigger, traffic crawls near Kalkaji temple

NEW DELHI: Craters on a small but critical stretch of Outer Ring Road next to Kalkaji Temple have become a regular nightmare for commuters for many months now. Because of a leaking water pipeline and overflowing water, the road surface is constantly getting eroded but Delhi Jal Board and PWD have failed to fix the problem. As a result, this small stretch has become a traffic bottleneck, leading to traffic headed in the direction of Modi Mill getting stalled till Chirag Dilli.
The potholes are so deep that the undercarriage of cars are getting badly damaged while two-wheeler riders risk their lives but the authorities are unmoved. Tasked by the lieutenant-governor to decongest roads in Delhi, officials seem to be in no hurry to rectify the situation that has been persisting here for months. The road space has also got narrowed because of construction material dumped at the site.
“It is an extremely busy stretch. One can only wonder how this is not being noticed by the authorities even after so many months. We have been struck here in a jam four times in the past week” said Ravi Shah, a daily commuter. The traffic invariably slows down here, causing massive jams even during off-peak hours. “If one really needs to grasp the scale of the problem, they must come during office hours when people head towards Noida,” said Navdeep Pawar,a sales manager, who was heading towards New Friends Colony.
The water is apprently flowing from the nearby Kalkaji temple and, because of this, construction material placed ahead on the stretch has turned into a sludge. This water is seeping into the weakened parts of the road, damaging them even more.
This reporter saw two ambulances stuck in the traffic here. “Since this pint is used for changing lanes, it was a bottleneck earlier too but now it is a nightmare. So many vehicles have been damaged,” said a commuter, Nitin Sham.
Taking advantage of the slow moving traffic, many vendors have started selling their wares on the footpath next to it, aggravating the problem.
A PWD official claimed that the road had been repaired recently but the material got washed away due to rain. “We have restarted the repair work and permanent repairs will be done within the next 15 days, provided it rains less,” he said. The official said the work couldn’t take off earlier because DJB was replacing the leaking pipeline. “The water in the potholes is largely coming from the temple complex. We will warn them and build a drain beside the road to prevent the water from overflowing,” he said.
A DJB official told TOI that their “internal work is going on at the site which is 50% complete while the external work can’t be done due to monsoon. The peripheral work to join the line from across the road to Govindpuri metro station has also got stalled because of the same reaons.”
PWD had told TOI in April that it had requested DJB to repair their leaking pipeline while DJB officials had said they were waiting for permission from Delhi traffic police to start repair work. A senior officer in Delhi traffic police said they have already given their go-ahead and have requested PWD to finish the work at earliest.